Dragon Ball Wiki:About

Dragon Ball Wiki (IPA: dʒrægɪnbɑːlwɪkɨ) created in 2005, is an English, web-based, free content encyclopedia project of all things regarding the Dragon Ball franchise created by Akira Toriyama, which spans a manga series, the anime series Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, Dragon Ball GT and Dragon Ball Super and numerous video game spin-offs, among countless other products. Dragon Ball Wiki is written collaboratively by volunteers from all around the world. Its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the Internet, simply by clicking the edit link at the top of the page. On another note, Dragon Ball Wiki tends to follow the English anime perspective more than the manga.

In every article, links will guide you to associated articles, often with additional information. Anyone is welcome to add further information, cross-references, or even citations, so long as they do so within Dragon Ball Wiki's editing policies and to an appropriate standard. One need not fear accidentally damaging Dragon Ball Wiki when adding or improving information, as other editors are always around to advise or correct obvious errors, if needed, and the Dragon Ball Wiki encyclopedia software, known as MediaWiki, is carefully designed to allow easy reversal of editorial mistakes.

Because Dragon Ball Wiki is an ongoing work to which in principle anybody can contribute, it differs from a paper-based reference source in some very important ways. In particular, older articles tend to be more comprehensive and balanced, while newer articles may still contain significant misinformation, unencyclopedic content, or vandalism. Users need to be aware of this in order to obtain valid information and avoid misinformation which has been recently added and not yet removed. However, unlike a paper reference source, Dragon Ball Wiki can be constantly updated, with articles on topical events being created or updated within minutes or hours, rather than months or years for printed encyclopedias.

Contents

About Dragon Ball Wiki

Dragon Ball Wiki statistics

There are currently 9,378 users registered with Dragon Ball Wiki, and as of today, there are 7,171 featured articles in the encyclopedia; every day, visitors from around the world make edits and create new articles to enhance the amount of knowledge held by the Dragon Ball Wiki encyclopedia. Visitors do not need any specialized qualifications to contribute, since their primary role is to write articles that cover already-existing knowledge, and people of all ages therefore can write Dragon Ball Wiki articles.

All the text in Dragon Ball Wiki, and most of the images and other content, is covered by the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). Contributions remain the property of their creators, while the GFDL license ensures the content will remain freely distributable and reproducible.

Who writes Dragon Ball Wiki?

Regular editors can be everyone from expert scholars to casual readers, all with one thing in common: the general Dragon Ball Wiki user is a fan of the Dragon Ball franchise. Anyone who visits the site can edit it. There are mechanisms that help community members watch for bad edits and also administrators and system operators with special powers to enforce correct behavior.
The site is currently administrated by 10X Kamehameha, SSJ4 Vegito, Shakuran13, Dark Seeker Kotsu, and PrinceZarbon.

Making the best use of Dragon Ball Wiki

Exploring Dragon Ball Wiki

Many visitors come to this site to acquire knowledge, others to share knowledge. In fact, at this very instant, articles may be being improved, and new articles are also being created. You can view changes as they happen at the Recent changes page. You also can view random articles. You may even search for articles, using the search box on the left side of the screen.

Basic navigation in Dragon Ball Wiki

Dragon Ball Wiki articles are all linked, or cross-referenced. Wherever you see highlighted text like, it means there is a link to some relevant article or Dragon Ball Wiki page with further in-depth information elsewhere if you need it. Holding your mouse over the link will often show you where a link will take you. You are always one click away from more information on any point that has a link attached. There are other links towards the ends of most articles, for other articles of interest, relevant external web sites and pages, reference material, and organized categories of knowledge which you can search and traverse in a loose hierarchy for more information. Some articles may also have links to definitions, audio previews, quotations, and art. You can add further links if a relevant link is missing, and this is one way to contribute.

Using Dragon Ball Wiki as a research tool

As a wiki, articles are never complete. They are continually edited and improved over time, and in general this results in an upward trend of quality, and a growing consensus over a fair and balanced representation of information.

Users should be aware that not all articles are of encyclopedic quality from the start, and may contain false or debatable information. Indeed, many articles start their lives as partisan, and it is after a long process of discussion, debate and argument, that they gradually take on a neutral point of view reached through consensus. Others may for a while become caught up in a heavily unbalanced viewpoint which can take some time - months perhaps - to extricate themselves and regain a better balanced consensus. In part, this is because Dragon Ball Wiki operates an internal resolution process when editors cannot agree on content and approach, and such issues take time to come to the attention of more experienced editors.

The ideal Dragon Ball Wiki article is balanced, neutral and encyclopedic, containing notable, verifiable knowledge. An increasing number of articles reach this standard over time, and many already have. However, this is a process and can take months or years to be achieved, as each user adds their contribution in turn. Some articles contain statements and claims which have not yet been fully cited. Others will later have entire new sections added. Some information will be considered by later contributors to be insufficiently founded, and may be removed or expounded.

While the overall trend is generally upward, it is important to use Dragon Ball Wiki carefully if it is intended to be used as a research source, since individual articles will, by their nature, vary in standard and maturity. There are guidelines and information pages designed to help users and researchers do this effectively.

How is Dragon Ball Wiki different from a paper guide?

Major differences between Dragon Ball Wiki and a traditional paper guide include the very low "cost" of adding additional articles or information, or expanding existing material; the ability to provide both overview summaries and extensive detail without becoming hard to read; ease of reading due to wikilinks replacing in-line explanations; timeliness accessibility and ease of editing in the editorial cycle; and low environmental cost (no paper or distribution impact on the environment). Also Dragon Ball Wiki updates itself every minute to stay abreast on the most recent developments, while paper guides are stuck in the day they were made.

Strengths, weaknesses, and article quality in Dragon Ball Wiki

Dragon Ball Wiki's greatest strengths, weaknesses and differences arise because it is open to anyone, has a large contributor base, and articles are written by consensus according to editorial guidelines and policies. The MediaWiki software which runs Dragon Ball Wiki retains a history of all edits and changes, thus information added to Dragon Ball Wiki never "vanishes", and is never "lost" or deleted.

Dragon Ball Wiki is open to a large contributor base, drawing a large number of editors from diverse backgrounds. This allows Dragon Ball Wiki to significantly reduce regional and cultural bias found in many other publications, and makes it very difficult for any group to censor and impose bias. A large, diverse editor base also provides access and breadth on subject matter that is otherwise inaccessible or little documented. A large number of editors contributing at any moment also means that Dragon Ball Wiki can produce excellent encyclopedic articles and resources covering newsworthy events within hours or days of their occurrence.

Dragon Ball Wiki articles and coverage of topics may have a tendency to reflect the cultural, age, and socio-economic demographics of its contributors. There is no systematic process to make sure that "obviously important" topics are written about, so Dragon Ball Wiki may contain unexpected oversights and omissions. While most articles may be altered by anyone, in practice editing will be performed by a certain demographic and will thus necessarily reflect a certain degree of implicit bias. An example includes how topics on paintings may not be covered as well on Dragon Ball Wiki, as topics on the band's discography are covered in great depth.

Allowing anyone to edit Dragon Ball Wiki means that it is more easily vandalized or susceptible to unchecked information, which requires removal. While blatant vandalism is usually easily spotted and rapidly corrected, Dragon Ball Wiki is more subject to subtle vandalism and viewpoint promotion than a typical reference work. While Dragon Ball Wiki articles generally attain a good standard after editing, it is important to note that fledgling, or less well monitored, articles may be susceptible to vandalism and insertion of false information. Dragon Ball Wiki's radical openness also means that any given article may be, at any given moment, in a bad state, such as in the middle of a large edit, or a controversial rewrite. Many contributors do not yet comply fully with key policies, or may add information without citable sources. Dragon Ball Wiki's open approach tremendously increases the chances that any particular factual error or misleading statement will be relatively promptly corrected. Numerous editors at any given time are monitoring recent changes and edits to articles on their watchlist.

Dragon Ball Wiki is written by consensus – an approach that has its pros and cons. Censorship or imposing "official" points of view is difficult to achieve and almost always fails after a time. Eventually for most articles, all notable views become fairly described and a neutral point of view reached. In reality, the process of reaching consensus may be long and drawn-out, with articles more fluid or changeable for a long time compared while they find their "neutral approach" that all sides can agree on. Reaching neutrality is occasionally made harder by extreme-viewpoint contributors. Dragon Ball Wiki operates a full editorial dispute resolution process, that allows time for discussion and resolution in depth, but also permits months-long disagreements before poor quality or biased edits will be removed forcibly.

There is a tentative consensus, backed by a gradual increase in academic citation as a source, that it provides a good starting point for research, and that articles in general have proven to be reasonably sound. That said, articles and subject areas sometimes suffer from significant omissions, and whilst misinformation and vandalism are usually corrected quickly, this does not always happen. (an example of this occurred on Wikipedia when a person inserted a fake biography linking a prominent journalist to the Kennedy assassinations and Soviet Russia as a joke on a co-worker which went undetected for 4 months, saying afterwards he "didn't know Wikipedia was used as a serious reference tool.") Therefore, a common conclusion is that it is a valuable resource and provides a good reference point on its subjects, but like any online source, unfamiliar information should be checked before relying upon it.

A 2005 editorial by a BBC technology writer comments that these debates are probably symptomatic of new cultural learnings which are happening across all sources of information (including search engines and the media), namely "a better sense of how to evaluate information sources."

Disclaimers

Dragon Ball Wiki, in common with many websites, makes its disclaimers highly visible, a practice which at times has led to commentators citing these in order to support a view that Dragon Ball Wiki is unreliable. A selection of similar disclaimers from places which are often regarded as reliable include sources such as Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Associated Press, and the Oxford English Dictionary.

Contributing to Dragon Ball Wiki

Anyone can contribute to Dragon Ball Wiki by clicking on the edit this page tab in an article. It is important to realize that in contributing to Dragon Ball Wiki, users are expected to be civil and neutral, respecting all points of view, and only add verifiable and factual information rather than personal views and opinions. However, repeated vandalizing can be reported to an administrator and the user may be temporarily blocked from editing Dragon Ball Wiki.

Most articles start as stubs, but after many contributions, they can become featured articles. Once you have determined that there is no article on Dragon Ball Wiki on a topic you are interested in, you may want to request that the article be written (or you could even research the issue and write it yourself). Dragon Ball Wiki has many on-going projects, focused on specific topic areas or tasks, which help coordinate editing. The hope of any contributor is to provide useful and accurate information to others, and the projects help coordinate efforts.

Editing Dragon Ball Wiki pages

Dragon Ball Wiki uses a simple yet powerful page layout to allow editors to concentrate on adding material rather than page design. These include automatic sections and subsections, automatic references and cross-references, image and table inclusion, indented and listed text, links ISBNs and math, as well as usual formatting elements and most world alphabets and common symbols. Most of these have simple formats that are deliberately very easy and intuitive.

Dragon Ball Wiki has robust version and reversion controls. This means that poor quality edits or vandalism can quickly and easily be reversed or brought up to an appropriate standard by any other editors, so inexperienced editors cannot accidentally do permanent harm if they make a mistake in their editing. As there are many more editors intent upon good quality articles than any other kind, articles that are poorly edited are usually corrected promptly by the rollback feature.

Editorial administration, oversight and management

The Dragon Ball Wiki community is largely self-organising, so that anyone may build a reputation as a competent editor and become involved in any role they may choose, subject to peer approval. Individuals often will choose to become involved in specialised tasks, such as reviewing articles at others' request, watching current edits for vandalism, watching newly created articles for quality control purposes, or similar roles. Editors who find that editorial administrator responsibility would benefit their ability to help the community may ask their peers in the community for agreement to undertake such roles; a structure which enforces meritocracy and communal standards of editorship and conduct. At present around a 75–80% approval rating after enquiry, is considered the requirement for such a role, a standard which tends to ensure a high level of experience, trust and familiarity across a broad front of projects within Dragon Ball Wiki.

Handling disputes and abuse

Dragon Ball Wiki has a rich span of methods to handle most abuses which commonly arise, which are well tested and should be relied upon.

Intentional vandalism can be reported and corrected by anyone.

Unresolved disputes between editors, whether based upon behavior, editorial approach or validity of content, can be addressed through the talk page of an article, through requesting comments from other editors or through Dragon Ball Wiki's comprehensive dispute resolution process.

Abuse of user accounts, such as the creation of Internet sock puppets or solicitation of friends and other parties to enforce a non-neutral viewpoint or inappropriate consensus within a discussion, or to disrupt other Dragon Ball Wiki processes in an annoying manner, are addressed through the sock puppet policy.

In addition, brand new users (until they have established themselves a bit) may at the start find that their votes are given less weight by editors in some informal polls, in order to prevent abuse of single purpose accounts.

Technical

Dragon Ball Wiki uses the MediaWiki software. It's an open-source program that is used on all Wikimedia projects, and is also widely used on other third party websites on the internet. The hardware supporting the various projects is based on almost 100 servers hosted in various hosting centers around the world.

Feedback and questions

Dragon Ball Wiki itself is run as a communal effort. It is a community project whose end result is an encyclopedia. Feedback about content should, in the first instance, be raised on the discussion pages of those articles. You are invited to be bold and edit the pages yourself to add information or correct mistakes if you are knowledgeable and able to do so.

Contacting individual Dragon Ball Wiki editors

To contact individual contributors, leave a message on their talk page. Standard places to ask policy and project-related questions are online, and the Dragon Ball Wiki mailing lists, over e-mail. You can also reach other Dragon Ball Wikipedians via IRC and instant messenger. Also you can try leaving a message on Dragon Ball Wiki officials' talk pages.